Lonely Boy and Fire Girl
by Captivation
Summary: It's a sad, boring house, and Tate is a lonely boy. Violet's family is a joke, and she's full of teenage fire.


AN: HI. Sorry I've been gone for a few weeks, I was on a farm and then moved to a new house and we just got internet TODAY so I'll be back now.

Anyway, the fic exchange over on livejournal was super great, and I wrote this for chinesebakery. It was voted Favorite Fluffy Fic, which I'm way too excited for, so THANK YOU to everyone who voted for me!

I know I didn't review most fics from the exchange, but I read them and loved them all I PROMISE.

_Lonely Boy and Fire Girl_

There are countless spirits trapped in the murder house, but Tate Langdon is _bored_. Countless people have called him a monster, a bad person, a psychopath, but he's also a teenage boy for eternity, with only stuffy middle aged wackos to talk to. It's been small talk, dirty looks, and his own dry hand on his dick for 17 years, and one day a year to venture out and hope no one recognizes him as the prick that shot up Westfield. He gets sad sometimes, if he thinks about the things he did when he was alive, or, fuck, the things he did—still wants to do—now that he's dead. He gets lonely too. He's hurt every person in this house in some way. Beau is always willing to roll his red ball back and forth, but Tate gets tired of that so quickly. His skin itches; he's anxious and stir crazy and bored bored bored. He wants to have a goddamn conversation with someone, about books or music or _anything_. Simply, a companion.

…

Tate hears the car pull up and is at the window in a flash. He expects Marcy, but no. He's drawn to the girl immediately, her long skirt and sweater despite the LA heat. He looks down at his own sweater, smiling, though he suspects his body doesn't react to temperature in quite the same way it did when he was alive. He watches her shamelessly. Tate likes how she ignores her parents and finds a hidden spot to sneak a cigarette.

Suddenly, Tate has something to do, someone to follow, some reason to stay sane.

He begins to follow her.

…

She goes down into the basement. Tate's right behind her, practically touching her, ready to jump out at anything that tries to hurt her. She's not scared and Tate wishes he had been more like her. She catches the ball sliding towards them, puzzled. He looms over her, warning whatever is hiding in the darkness of the basement.

…

She's reading outside with her back against a tree. Tate lets himself sit close, knowing the hum of nature will hide his breathing. He likes the way she turns the pages; just two thin fingers on the corner, and a smoothing hand down the printed words. It's a book he's never heard of, but he hasn't heard of most books that came out after he died. She turns the final page and smiles and it stretches into a grin and Tate can't help the noise that escapes his throat because she's gorgeous and young and free and fun to watch.

She looks in his direction, her grin gone.

She's reaching out a hand to touch whatever it is she suspects and Tate is sucking in a breath, fighting to make himself smaller, when her mother opens the door and calls her name.

"Violet?"

She stands up and walks to the house, looking back once, quizzical, and a little amused.

Tate stays and rolls her name around his mouth, _Violet_, tastes it on his lips, stitches it into his brain.

…

He likes watching her eat dinner with her parents. They think she's oblivious; she sees right through them. She hears them argue, Tate does too. Tonight she's hiding her constant smirk behind bites of food while Tate lurks in the corner, enjoying the banter.

"Are you excited for school tomorrow, Violet?" her father asks. Tate hates him and the way he looks at Moira.

Violet's fork clatters against her plate. "Yeah, Dad, I'm pumped." Even Tate, who's barely spoken to anyone for 17 years, can hear the sarcasm positively dripping off her words.

"You shouldn't write this place off so quickly. Maybe you can make some friends in a new place."

"I don't want to be friends with these people. I hate it here."

"I think that's pretty close minded, Violet," her Mom chimes in.

Tate watches Violet's shoulders rise and fall with one deep breath, then she leaves the table with a muttered "bullshit," leaves the room. He follows.

…

Later that night she's outside on the stone wall, leaning nonchalantly and smoking a cigarette. Tate can't stop watching the way her lips form around the filter, pursing and then blowing. He wants to grab her jaw, force his fingers against her tongue, make her suck those too. But for now he just watches. Maybe one day he'll gather up the courage to show himself to the beautiful creature he has become enraptured by.

Tate wants a cigarette. He smoked occasionally when he was alive and likes how the smoke feels in his now stagnant lungs. Maybe he could go around the corner, come back, pretend he's a neighborhood boy, start a conversation. Maybe she would light the cigarette, leaning close and sheltering the flame with her smooth hand. Before he can put this plan into action, Violet's standing up, neatly extinguishing the glowing nub on the stone with her foot.

She's at the door when she looks back, not quite at Tate.

"Are you coming?"

The question hits him like a shovel to the face. He's invisible. He stupidly looks around to check for another person. No one.

Violet doesn't linger outside, just opens the door and glides through. Tate slips in before it can close.

He follows her silently to her room. Violet doesn't say a word, doesn't look around all night.

…

Tate sees her knock a picture frame onto the floor in her Dad's office. Her face smiles up at him from underneath cracked glass. Violet presses the toe of her boot into the mess gently, grinding the shards into her own grin. He watches her go, smiling at her father as he passes, about to find her little work of art behind his desk.

She's a firecracker, a bundle of sparks.

…

Tate stays with her that night. He's afraid to leave; how many other ghosts are following her? She's an angel sleeping, a stone garden sculpture, wild flowers growing up and over her prone form. There's plenty of space behind her. Tate could gently climb onto the bed and wind his arms around his angel, his forbidden fruit,

He wants more than anything to talk to her, to explain who he is, who she's been sensing for days. What if she accepts who he is, murder victims and all? What if she lets Tate touch her? She's just out of his reach. She's asleep and Tate just watches and thinks about what her hands must feel like. He hasn't felt another person's hands in years.

He lets himself imagine Violet, all of Violet. Her flat stomach, slender thighs, baby bird's wing shoulder blades. She's so young and full of life, a fire Tate lost to the house decades ago. Next thing he knows his dick is hard in his jeans and he's disgusted with himself. She makes a cute snuffling sound from the bed and he's gone physically, disappeared into the basement in a flash, jeans scrunched down his thighs and a hand working quick, long strokes up and down his cock, but mentally he's still upstairs, fast asleep with his angel.

…

The next night Tate loses track of her. They were reading in her room "together," and she was gone when Tate glanced up.

He finds her in the bathroom, razor poised, face blank.

She makes a cut. Tate rushes up behind her, stopping short of her body.

"No, Violet, no, please no," he pleads so she can't hear him. He can feel the heat of her back on his chest, he's so close.

The razor is pressed into her skin again. Tate doesn't realize she's leaning back, finding his body in the empty bathroom.

Then he's touching her. Her back fits snugly in between his shoulders, his cheek is flush against hers, his hands are prying the razor away, fingers grasping and twining together. He struggles to etch the feeling of her skin into his memory. He knows this touch is fleeting. For just a moment, he holds Violet tight and it's surreal and the most loved Tate has felt in years. Violet sobs once and he disappears to the hallway. The razor digs into his palm, her blood mixing with his.

Violet wails. The house reaches out slowly, extinguishing her sparks, one by one.

Tate rocks, alone again.

…

The next time he sees her, Violet's back to her spunky self. He had spent the day in her room, listening to music and thinking about her. He pretends this is his room again and he's alive. He pretends he recognizes the music coming from her little "iPod" thing. He's lost in thoughts of his old life when she walks in the door.

He snaps up and she stares daggers at him.

"Who the fuck are you?"

"Uh."

"Why are you in my house?"

"I didn't mean to." His hands were shaking, his thoughts weren't connecting.

"Didn't mean to what? Are you some kind of pervert?"

"No!"

"You just like hanging out in my bedroom then?"

"No, I, uh, live here?"

"No you don't."

He stood up. What was happening. What was he saying?

"I used to, I mean."

"What, are you one of the ghosts?"

Tate almost collapsed.

"You know about us?"

"Do you fuckers think I wouldn't be able to tell someone was following me around for days?"

He looked down, shuffled his feet.

"Was it you?"

He nodded, just barely.

"Was it you in the bathroom yesterday?" Her voice was quieter, distant. He looked up and she was turned away, towards the window.

"Yes. I'm sorry."

"For what? What's your name?"

"Tate."

"Tate." She sits in the middle of her bed, obviously uncomfortable. "When did you die?"

"1994. I got completely fucked on coke, lit my mom's boyfriend on fire, and shot 15 kids at Westfield. Do you want me to leave?" She must have been terrified. Tate tends to forget what's acceptable to say in a conversation with someone you just met.

"No, stay. Chat. I'm bored."

And that's how they become friends, Violet's boredom and Tate's poor conversation skills.

…

Now Tate watches her even more closely. She talks to him, feeds his curiosity with a smug grin. She knows he's starved for companionship. She might tease him a little, letting him trail behind her going up the stairs, putting her feet in his lap while lounging outside, exaggerating how her lips fit around a cigarette.

But it's all Tate's sort of teenage boy hormones that tell him to wait in her room while she showers, knowing full well she doesn't have clothes with her and will have to come back in only a towel. He hears the water shut off and buries his face in a book. Violet sighs when she sees him.

"Tate, get out, I have to get dressed."

He looks up like he has no clue she's naked and wet and warm. She studies him for a bit.

"You must be really lonely," she says kindly as she approaches the side of the bed where Tate is feigning calmness. "You don't get to talk to people often."

"I'm a monster. No one wants to talk to monsters."

Violet touches his cheek with a humid hand.

"You're not a monster. Some people just aren't meant for living."

"But I'm still living. I'll be here forever."

The bed shifts as she perches on the edge. "Maybe you were just waiting for someone."

Tate can feel the sweat prick along his hairline. Violet's so close and so warm.

He looks at her flushed cheeks, flushed with life, and could cry right then. They are two people who could never in a million years be together. And of course she's right. Of course he's lonely.

She rises and goes to her desk, touching and swirling stuff on her iPod until music plays, a song Tate actually knew before he was killed. It's loud and raucous and something else for Tate to focus on besides the naked girl in front of him. He decides to stop being a dick and heads for the door. Violet catches him with a smooth hand on his shoulder.

"Where are you going?" The sad, cheek-touching Violet of a few seconds ago is replaced by this vixen, a version of her who isn't afraid to drop the towel held around her chest. Tate hears it hit the floor and is afraid to turn around. He panics. When was the last time he'd seen a naked girl? Besides a few pornos he found in the attic, not since he died. And there is one right behind him.

"Tate?"

"Violet?" he says to the door.

"Can you come here?"

He turns around, eyes glued to her face.

"Now come _here,_" she teases, with a beckoning finger that sneaks forward to hook into his t-shirt, dragging him towards her. She kisses him, hard, and quickly loosens the belt around his waist. He's grinning like the happiest kid on earth while Violet's damp fingers toss his shirt away and he finally looks at the body before him.

She's more perfect than he imagined all those nights. Perfect little breasts, perfect slender waist, perfect pale thighs. _Perfect_ hands that are reaching into his boxers and wrapping around him.

He steps out of the clothing pooled around his feet and touches her. A dead boy and a living girl. His head feels steamy, like she brought the air from the shower into her bedroom and it's slipping inside of him.

Her hair snags on his fingers but he just digs in deeper. He wants to get lost in every inch of her body,

She's walking him back to her bed with a hand teasing his already hard cock and her sweet pink lips against his own.

Tate's seen the way she holds a cigarette gently between two fingers, how delicately she's hugged her mother at rare moments. But there's nothing gentle about the way Violet pushes him onto her bed and straddles his stomach, trapping him between her thighs. She kisses him so her hair shimmers on either side of their faces and her little cunt leaks all over the stretch of skin between his hips.

Suddenly, her teeth clamp onto his bottom lip.

"Ah, Vi, what the fuck?"

She stares down at him. "That was for the bathroom yesterday, letting me fucking touch you." Tate slides his hands up her ribs to her delicate breasts, tentatively covering them with his calloused palms.

"Can I touch you now?"

Violet hums along to a line of the song, something about kissing with tongues, and nods.

She lets Tate touch her while she sucks patches of red onto his neck. He wishes he had some idiot friends to show the marks off to, proof that he isn't crazy, isn't a sociopath, that someone actually likes him.

He thinks he might explode if something doesn't touch his dick soon, and Violet can tell. She peels his hands away from her body, where one is stretching two fingers inside of her, the other cupping the smooth swell of skin at her upper thigh, a wandering thumb pressing idly on her clit.

She rises up and he reaches for his dick, coating it in the wetness on his fingers. She's right over him and he can hardly take the anticipation and she touches him with her dripping cunt and circles around the head, then glides down, smooth as a whistle.

Violet, who had been calm and collected this whole time, quickly loses herself. Tate watches her rise up and down, gasping and panting and cursing and clawing at his chest like a hungry animal.

She makes four parallel scratches down his ribs.

"Those are for watching me smoke the other night."

Four more scratches, across his sternum.

"Those are for watching me read."

Tate winces with each scratch, but a naked Violet, fucking him, digging her nails into his flesh is probably the sexiest thing he'll see in his eternity.

She takes a deep breath and settles down, rocking her hips against his, and traces his jaw with her bloody fingernails.

"Keep watching me," she says, and Tate flips them over, quickly thrusting back into her. He grunts in response to every obscene, pornographic whimper that sneaks past her lips. It's downright erotic, the act the lonely boy and fire girl are engaged in. Cock, cunt, in, out. He's dead. She's alive.

Tate's forehead falls to her shoulder. His hands are braced on either side of her head. He can feel strands of her hair, spread out like a halo, under his palms and pinching between his fingers.

"Tate, Tate, Tate, Tate," Violet's mumbling.

"What, Violet?" He leaves her skin to watch her blissful face, watching how her body slides up and back down as he fucks into her.

"You're dead," she whispers.

"Yeah."

She doesn't respond, just digs her heels into the backs of Tate's knees and strains her head back, neck tight and stretching. "There, fuck, Tate, there. Right there."

She meets his thrusts a few luxurious times then freezes against him, letting out a shuddering breath with his name maybe mixed in. When it's over her cheek falls to the bed spread and Tate keeps going, remembering the times he watched Violet sleep, looking just as peaceful as she does now.

She's smiling under him and that's what gets him, a tiny smile is all it takes for him to cum fast inside her. The noise he makes is 17 years of loneliness embodied. Violet hums contentedly.

Tate rolls off her, reluctant, but lays right by her side. His chest is heaving.

"Tate."

He turns his head to find her looking right at him. She looks like a sleepy angel.

"Yeah?"

"You're dead."

"You already said that."

"Well, sorry, it's going to take a little getting used to."

"Sorry."

"We can't be together," she says casually, like those words aren't going to tear him apart.

"Oh. Okay." Tate thinks about getting up, sulking back to the attic to let the must soak back into his clothes in hopes of covering the scent of Violet.

"It would never work, we have no future, but I think we should give it a shot."

"Really?"

"Why the fuck not?"

Tate grins, positively giddy, and watches Violet's eyes drift closed. Her hand finds his between them.

"Remember when you said I was just waiting for someone?"

"Mhm."

"I hope it's you."

"It better be, you fucker."

Maybe this boy just got a little less lonely.

AN: Okay, now go read The Burning Man by shootingstella and Make War by ohyellowbird. Those were my two very favorites ever. Literally jaw dropping.


End file.
